Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire

Shirin Neshat (b. Qazvin, 1957), an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker living in exile in America, has spent her career examining what it means to exist between two cultures, focusing on human resilience in the face of upheaval and oppression. Born outside of Tehran, Neshat moved to California for her studies in the 1970s. When the Islamic Revolution erupted in Iran in 1979, she was unable to return to her home and family for many years. A brief visit in the 1990s, where she witnessed the impact of rigid Islamic law on Iranian women, marked the beginning of Neshat’s thirty-year engagement with themes of female empowerment, political resistance, and displacement and belonging. Drawing on the emotional impact of poetry and music, her highly stylized photographs and narrative time-based works explore the turbulent social conditions of life in Iran and, more recently, America.

Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire marks the first exhibition of the artist’s work on Long Island. The show offers a non-linear survey of Neshat’s artistic development, presenting focused installations of four significant bodies of work. These range from her first major photographic works, Women of Allah (1993–7)—images inspired by women’s involvement in the Islamic Revolution and Iran-Iraq War—to The Book of Kings (2012), a portrait series that calls on the tradition of Persian epic poetry to address the Arab Spring protest movement. The exhibition will also include more recent projects that present Neshat’s surreal film and video works alongside still photographs, including Land of Dreams (2019) and The Fury (2022–3), in which the artist turns her attention to exploring American culture from an immigrant’s perspective.

Though distinct, all four bodies of work are connected by motifs of rebellion, storytelling, and human connection; presented together, they reveal how these key themes have developed throughout Neshat’s artistic evolution. The exhibition also features a gallery dedicated to her private collection of work by fellow artists, from friends such as Marina Abramović and Robert Longo to artists based in the Middle East. This installation reveals Neshat’s influences as well as her championship of lesser-known peers, especially from cultures where censorship impedes free expression.

An internationally acclaimed artist, Neshat has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Art Institute of Chicago; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Serpentine Gallery, London; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Neshat has directed three feature-length films: Women Without Men (2009), which received the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 66^th Venice International Film Festival; Looking for Olum Kulthum (2017); and most recently, Land of Dreams (2021), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. In 2024, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center of Photography, New York. Neshat currently lives and works in New York.

Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire is organized by Corinne Erni, Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education, with Scout Hutchinson, Associate Curator of Exhibitions.

Exhibition Support
Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire is made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of the Robert Lehman Foundation; Sarika Singh and Vivek Bantwal, Goldman Sachs Gives; Yanina and Allan Spivack, and Nina Yankowitz and Barry Holden.

The Parrish Art Museum’s programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and by the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.